Daily Inspiration Quote by Ralph Nader

Nader takes a fussy line in the tax code and turns it into a moral punchline: “separation of calories and corporations” riffs on church-and-state language to frame business meal deductions as a kind of institutional corruption. The joke lands because it’s structurally familiar (a principled separation) and suddenly bodily (calories), collapsing the high-minded rhetoric of governance into the low reality of who gets to eat on the public dime.

The specific intent is policy-clear: end or curtail the deductibility of “business meals,” a category that routinely blurs into subsidized schmoozing. But Nader isn’t just nitpicking accounting. He’s attacking a whole ecosystem where influence is traded in pleasant, deniable rituals. A meal is small enough to seem harmless, social enough to feel natural, and common enough to disappear into expense reports. That’s exactly why it’s powerful. The deduction doesn’t just reduce tax liability; it launders status and access into something that looks like ordinary commerce.

Subtext: the corporate state isn’t built only through massive, headline-grabbing subsidies. It’s built through everyday entitlements that teach people to accept corporate comfort as a civic norm. By invoking “calories,” Nader highlights the asymmetry: ordinary workers buy lunch with post-tax dollars while executives can route theirs through the company and the IRS. The line also anticipates a broader critique of regulatory capture: when government quietly underwrites the networking that shapes policy, the public ends up paying for the room where they aren’t invited.